Saw coverage on the news of a super fast unintended homebirth (17 minutes post-911 call), attended at the last moment by a police officer who lived in the neighborhood. The coverage took the tack that this sort of coverage always seems to take: Police Officer Delivers Baby! It is her first delivery! The police officer was even heard to utter that she’d helped the father out, that it was a “Two-Man Job”.

Notice whose work and contribution is completely erased here? The mother.

The woman who pushed a baby out of her body with a muscle that, at full-term pregnancy, is the largest and strongest muscle in the human body. The woman whose body incredibly stretched enough to carry a baby inside, and to allow passage of a baby out, and which will now heal and return to its orignal shape. The woman who experienced whatever pain or intensity there was to experience in the delivery. The woman who had already been carrying and nourishing this baby for nine months and experiencing whatever physical discomfort (and/or pleasure) might have been involved in that for her. That woman.

Let’s be absolutely clear here: this mother DELIVERED her baby. If both the police officer and the father had not been present, the baby would still have been born. That’s the truth.